We won’t pay for the bosses’ crisis
Nick Hart, Socialist Party National Committee
The airwaves have been full of voices from Keir Starmer’s Labour government telling us of the need for “ruthless” cuts to public spending this spring.
Why?
It’s not the fault of workers striving to keep our underfunded hospitals, schools and other public services running from day to day, on lower pay in real terms than 15 years ago.
But ‘the markets’ aren’t happy. Investors can see the weakness of Britain’s capitalist economy, and the cost of government borrowing has shot up.
What’s more important: ending queues of ambulances and patients out the doors of hospitals, restoring threadbare council services and fixing our crumbling infrastructure, or bowing down to the demands of the international banksters?
It’s not like there’s no money around. Britain has 165 billionaires. The net worth of Britain’s 20 richest individuals has more than doubled in the past decade.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Starmer have pledged an “iron grip” on government spending and borrowing, so they can protect the loot of spivs and speculators who enrich themselves at our expense.
Already government departments are being asked to prepare swingeing cuts, to services already crumbling and wrecked.
Working-class and young people have to be prepared to fight another round of austerity. The strike wave showed that when workers take action, the bosses and government can be forced to cough up.
We need a mass movement and a workers’ party that will take the wealth off the super-rich and change the ‘rules’ of the game to win funding for the public services and pay we need. To replace the ailing capitalist system, rigged against working-class people, with a democratic socialist society that can use the wealth and resources to plan a world that can provide for us all.